The Tyendinaga Support Committee – Montreal is a Montreal-based indigenous solidarity organization that works with Mohawk activists in Tyendinaga, a First Nation located in Ontario between Montreal and Toronto on the Bay of Quinte, to support their struggles for dignity, land, and self-determination.
We are currently engaged in campaign to pressure Canadian National Railway to drop their lawsuit against three Mohawk activists. CN is seeking damages for railway blockades that took place in 2006 and 2007.
Read or print the zine
For a detailed background and articles about the blockades, you can download and read this zine produced by the Tyendinaga Support Committee – Toronto: In Support of the Mohawks of Tyendinaga
Take action!
Learn more about the CN campaign or find out how you can help.
Background
Among other struggles, people in Tyendinaga are fighting for the return of the Culbertson Tract, a piece of land that has been acknowledged to be Mohawk land by the Canadian Government, but which has yet to be returned. Until 2006, when activists occupied a quarry, gravel companies were hauling away thousands of tonnes of gravel from the Culbertson Tract. As part of their struggle for the Culbertson tract, and to raise awareness about living conditions on the Tyendinaga reserve including toxic water, a lack of drinking water, poverty, and high suicide rates, especially among youth, activists from the community have shut down major highways and rail lines several times.
Criminal charges brought forward against people involved in blockading actions have been dropped, but Canadian National Railway is seeking damages for rail stoppages in 2006 and 2007. The company filed a lawsuit against three Mohawk activists, Shawn Brant, Tara Green, and Jason Maracle, as well as “John Doe,” “Jane Doe,” and “persons unknown”. Charging unknown persons allows CN to target. In an interview with Matt Silburn of the Kingston Indigenous Solidarity Network, Shawn Brant argues that CN is not just seeking financial compensation for the money lost during the blockades, but that “CN launched the lawsuit in order to say ‘we don’t want you to do any more rail blockades’” (Brant, 2007).
Tyendinaga activists are not only fighting back against the lawsuit. They have also brought a countersuit forward against CN, charging CN with disturbing animal life and affecting hunting practices. The countersuit was launched to “bring attention to that and the hardship that those rail lines have cost.” Shawn Brant recounts that “from the spot on June 29 [where the rail blockade was] it was about 2 miles away where my grandparents, 50 years ago were killed on the lines. 5 of my mother’s brothers and sisters and her parents were all killed on the train lines. When they were killed they were going to town. When the workers came to take care of them, they took their money, they took their rings off their fingers, and robbed all the people that were there that were dead” (Brant, 2007).
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